desire them that I should really feel wicked not to have a humble heart. There’s a quarter indeed,” she added with a noble unction, “to which I don’t fear to say for myself that no day and no night pass without my showing it. However, you English, I know, don’t like one to speak of one’s religion. I’m just as simply thankful for mine--I mean with as little sense of indecency or agony about it--as I am for my health or my carriage. My point is at any rate that I say in no cruel spirit of triumph, yet do none the less very distinctly say, that the person Mr. Mitchett’s marriage has inevitably pleased least may be now rather to be feared.” These words had the sound of a climax, and she had brought them out as if, with her duty done, to leave them; but something that took place, for her eye, in the face Mr. Longdon had half-averted gave her after an instant what he might have called her second wind. “Oh I know you think she always HAS been! But you’ve exaggerated--as to that; and I don’t say that even at present it’s anything we shan’t get the better of. Only we must keep our heads. We must remember that from her own point of view she has her grievance, and we must at least look as if we trusted her. That, you know, is what you’ve never quite done.” He gave out a murmur of discomfort which produced in him a change of position, and the sequel to the change was that he presently accepted from his cushioned angle of the sofa the definite support it could offer. If his eyes moreover had not met his companion’s they had been brought by the hand he repeatedly and somewhat distressfully passed over them closer to the question of which of the alien objects presented to his choice it would cost him least to profess to handle. What he had already paid, a spectator would easily have gathered from the long, the suppressed wriggle that had ended in his falling back, was some sacrifice of his habit of not privately depreciating those to whom he was publicly civil. It was plain, however, that when he presently spoke his thought had taken a stretch. “I’m sure I’ve fully intended to be everything that’s proper. But I don’t think Mr. Vanderbank cares for her.” It kindled in the Duchess an immediate light. “Vous avez bien de l’esprit. You put one at one’s ease. I’ve been vaguely groping while you’re already there. It’s really only for Nanda he cares?” “Yes--really.” The Duchess debated. “And yet exactly how much?” “I haven’t asked him.”